


hymns upon your lips rising to shore

by catgirl220



Series: Senses of Hogwarts [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, tattooed! Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6921439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catgirl220/pseuds/catgirl220
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginny Weasley has always relied on touch. She lies next to Harry and traces the story on his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hymns upon your lips rising to shore

Ginny thinks that Harry is beautiful. 

Although it’s not a word usually applied to men in Wizarding culture, Ginny thinks that it should be. Harry is beautiful— there’s no other word for it. 

It’s not even his physical looks, although she does find them attractive (as do most other women). Laughing eyes and tousled hair aside, it’s his skin that makes him unique. 

It was Bill who came up with the idea of magical tattoos. He and Charlie practiced on each other after Fleur refused to let him experiment drawing pictures on her skin. The tattoos got popular— extremely so. Teddy Lupin opened up a bustling tattoo parlor in Diagon Alley the second he finished school. 

Most wizards have small tattoos with personal meaning to them. Harry is _covered_ with them. 

His arms are a flower garden completely inked, bursting with lilies and chrysanthemums to commemorate his parents and all those they’ve lost. A snake curls up from beneath his shirt collar and around his left ear, and a small snowy owl is drawn on the back of his neck, wings stretched out and individual feathers patterned as it flies forever. 

His back is covered in black stars, forming constellations. Ginny likes to trace them sometimes, lying next to Harry and marveling at the way they feel under her fingers. 

As a joke between them, Harry got a Hungarian Horntail inked onto his hip, a reference to their Hogwarts days of first dates and laughing at rumors. The dragon moves, too. Ginny finds it curled up sleeping sometimes in the curve of Harry’s stomach, tail twitching as it dreams. George likes to poke Harry’s side and check if the dragons roars silently, something Ginny finds a little odd. (She doesn’t tell him that if she tickles Harry, the dragon will arch its back and flap its wings. As much as Ginny loves her brother, she’s not sure she wants him tickling her man.) 

Harry tans easily, while Ginny either turns beet red in the summer or stays pale as a ghost. They take a vacation together and slather sunscreen on the other’s backs and legs with teasing touches and long massages. Ginny lies next to him on the beach after a long day of swimming, feeling Harry’s skin, warm from the sun and scratchy from sand, press against hers. 

 

There are other parts of him that, whenever she sees them, remind her of the war. There is the obvious lightning scar on Harry’s forehead, but everyone knows about that one. Another prominent scar is the words raised on his knuckles from Umbridge. _I must not tell lies._ Ginny always feels a flash of hot anger for this injustice done to Harry and has to remind herself viciously that Umbridge is imprisoned in Azkaban. 

He has a scar from when Voldemort’s snake bit him, two red dots barely visible on his arm. A half-ring of old, burned lines rest from the Horcruxed locket just above his heart. Ginny kisses it sometimes, to remind him that he is alive and well. Voldemort is defeated, and they are safe. 

She has scars too, although hers are not physical. Ginny will wake up screaming for Fred or Lupin or Tonks or anyone else they lost in the war. Once, Harry tried to wake her up from a nightmare and she punched him in the face. She’ll jolt awake yelling curses and defense spells, and he holds her and rocks back and forth until they’re both calm again. 

 

They get a house with yellow kitchen walls and bright open rooms. Ginny and Harry plant a garden together in the back, which quickly turns into a dirt fight. Handfuls of rich warm soil are scooped up and thrown with an athlete’s aim at the other person, who retaliates just as strongly. 

Harry tries to run but slips and lands back into the dirt, getting even filthier. Ginny laughs out loud and crawls over to him, not caring about her own jeans turning brown. He pulls her down and distracts her with a kiss— before dumping a handful of dirt right on top of her head. 

Ginny yells, half-amused and half-indignant. She leans forward and smudges her thumb across Harry’s cheekbone, leaving a line of earth behind. “You better help me wash this out of my hair, you ass.”

He grins cheekily at her. “I look forward to it.” 

“Oh, shut up.” 

 

They go visit a pregnant Hermione and a very proud Ron. Hermione’s hair is bushier than ever and her ankles are swelling up, but she looks radiant. 

“Your mum knitted us this baby blanket,” Hermione remarks when the boys are in the other room doing who-knows-what. “Feel how soft it is!” 

Ginny runs her hand over the soft wool obligingly. “It’s lovely.” 

“Isn’t it just? I was reading the other day, and I—” Hermione winces, placing a hand over her stomach. “She’s doing somersaults inside of me, I swear. Here, Gin, want to feel the baby kick?” 

The younger woman places her palm over her friend’s belly, waiting. Suddenly, there is a light tap at her hand from inside the womb. 

“Wow!” Ginny whispers, somehow feeling like she should be quiet. “Hello, baby.” 

Hermione smiles and addresses the person inside of her. “Say hello to Aunt Ginny.” 

Harry and Ron come back from the other room and take a seat, rambling about the Ministry. Harry catches Ginny’s eye and smiles. She grins wonderingly back. 

 

Their generation is the war-torn one, children too young to have experienced all that they did and parents mourning the fresh scars that have appeared alongside the wrinkles of age. Their generation is made up of people who have broken the world apart and are building it back up again. 

The Wizarding world sees Harry Potter as semi-divine — a war hero to be revered. Ginny sees him as a man with wit and silky hair and bad breath in the mornings. 

She traces his tattoos one night, starting from his arms and working her way up his bare back, outlining the flowery leaves and stars with the broom-calloused pads of her fingers. She runs her lips lightly over the bite wound in his shoulder and the snake inked around his ear. Her fingers, moving around Harry’s jaw, can feel the scratch of day-old stubble and the way his vocal cords move when he laughs. 

And Ginny thinks that he is beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from lyrics in "Touch Me" from Spring Awakening. 
> 
> I could have made this fic a lot sexier and more detailed-- I might go back and add more but for now just decided to leave the content gentler. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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